Last month, I gave my biceps a break, skipped the 840-page fall issue of Vogue, and instead perused a more modestly sized — and modestly fashioned — new mag, Eliza, which hit the stands with its debut issue this summer.

A casual reader may see the rail-thin model on the cover (who also happens to be Eliza’s editor, Summer Bellessa), in combination with inane feature articles such as “Get Your Yoga Om,” and think this is just another Cosmo knock-off. But it’s more than that — it’s Bellessa’s answer to today’s female fashion choices, which this member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints perceives as provocative, skimpy, and tacky. One senses that the Utah-based Eliza crowd feels the same way about modern female behavior in general.

“Your interaction with fashion tells a story about you,” Eliza tells us. “It’s not a tale of fickle trends or pretending to be someone else. It’s not about uncomfortable dresses and impossible heels. It’s not about titillating styles and risqué behavior ... It’s about expressing yourself, not exposing yourself.”

You won’t see any bikinis in Eliza’s swimsuit spread, just one-pieces and a few belly-covering tankinis. No cleavage shows up in the “Layers in the Sun” photo spread. And in the special “modest wedding” section, long-sleeved gowns replace trendy strapless versions.

Truth be told, lots of the clothes are hot — I’d happily don most of the dresses and swimsuits featured in the magazine, and feel quite fashionable doing so, in a decidedly vintage-hippie-chic way. But there’s something irksome about modesty that’s dictated from a detached source — something that feels uncomfortably condescending and conservative.

That discomfort is only compounded by articles such as: “Guys Guide: Top Nine Guy Movies You Should Know About” (since when is Ghostbusters a guy movie?!), or “We’ve Got Issues: Child Bride or Old Maid? Is There a Right Age to Get Married?” — both of which feel distinctly old-fashioned, as if I’ve time-traveled back to the ’50s.

It’s not surprising that Eliza’s second issue, coming out this fall, will feature an interview with Wendy Shalit, author of 2000’s Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue and this year’s Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good, and webmistress behind www.modestyzone.net, “an informal community of young women who don’t have a voice in the mainstream media.” Shalit is a lightning rod in her own right, a champion of the school that accuses modern women of confusing promiscuity and crassness with sexual liberation and feminism.

Where some women might claim that they are expressing themselves by exposing themselves, the likes of Eliza and Shalit step in to declare that impossible. And in doing so, Eliza becomes more than a demure fashion magazine — it enters a delicate social debate that pits women against women, sluts against saints, tackiness against tradition.

18. Joe the Plumber An overnight sensation in unsexiness, this shiny skulled, pea-brained blue-collar worker has reverse-Midas powers: everything this faker touches — from the McCain campaign to Pajamas Media — turns into a substance that folks in his profession unhappily know all too much about. Of course, as was pointed out numerous times during the campaign but which still amuses, his name is not really Joe (he’s Samuel Wurzelbacher) and he is not registered to operate as a plumber in his home state of Ohio, which means that, er, he isn’t actually a plumber.

Musical power The Man in the Chair (Charles Abbott) is a man of a certain age who wears both a sweater vest and a cardigan, feels pangs of a "non-specific sadness," and harbors an abiding nostalgia for the musical theater of yesteryear.

Shopgirl Watch any red-carpet event and you're likely to feel less than picture perfect.

Review: Neil Young Trunk Show If a Neil Young neophyte can find himself rocking in a cinema seat to the spirited, soulful music performed in this second of a rumored triptych of Demme-directed, Young-starring concert documentaries, long-time fans are bound to break their armrests.

Bra Boys A cheaply produced Australian documentary of local interest, now exported to America.

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T-shirt trendsetters’ holiday sale Maine’s very own little taste of couture, Rogues Gallery, will have another of its wildly popular sample sales on Saturday at SPACE Gallery.

72. MC Frontalot Now that dweebitude is all the rage in mainstream circles (see: the popularity of Marvel comics movies, video-game sales, etc.), all that separates real geeks like nerdcore hip-hop king MC Frontalot from everybody else are his unfortunate accessories. And his shitty rapping.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE | July 24, 2014 When three theater companies, all within a one-hour drive of Portland, choose to present the same Shakespeare play on overlapping dates, you have to wonder what about that particular show resonates with this particular moment.

CHECKING IN: THE NEW GUARD AND THE WRITER'S HOTEL | July 11, 2014 Former Mainer Shanna McNair started The New Guard, an independent, multi-genre literary review, in order to exalt the writer, no matter if that writer was well-established or just starting out.

NO TAR SANDS | July 10, 2014 “People’s feelings are clear...they don’t want to be known as the tar sands capitol of the United States."